Removals in North Harrow, HA2 and HA1

A 1927 station and the district built round it

North Harrow is younger than most of the places around it. Pinner, Harrow and Headstone all have medieval roots, but North Harrow was the name of a station first and of a district only afterwards. The county history volume that covers Harrow and Pinner records that the Metropolitan Railway opened a station at North Harrow in 1927, followed by Northwick Park by 1929 and West Harrow at about the same time. By 1931 and 1932, it says, building ran without a break along the main road from Pinner through North Harrow to Kenton, and the open fields between Pinner and Roxeth were covered during the 1930s, so that West, South and North Harrow existed as districts of their own by 1938.

That short building history is the useful thing to know before a move. Most of the housing here went up between the two world wars, much of it the work of private builders, and the shops gathered at the one crossroads where Station Road meets Pinner Road, right by the station. When someone tells us they are leaving North Harrow, we can usually picture the house before we see it, and the questions that change the price are about the details: the loft, the drive, the floor of the flat and the parking zone.

The county roads either side of Pinner Road

Run your eye down a North Harrow address list and you keep meeting English counties. North of Pinner Road and east of the station, the streets in Harrow’s parking zone NH1 include Cornwall Road, Cumberland Road, Durham Road, Gloucester Road, Norfolk Road, Somerset Road, Surrey Road, Sussex Road and Westmorland Road, with Canterbury Road among them. Those addresses carry HA1 postcodes. South of the crossroads, zone NH2 takes in Lancaster Road, Northumberland Road and Suffolk Road, in HA2. Further east, towards Harrow, a second set of county-named streets (Bedford, Devonshire, Oxford and Rutland Roads, off Pinner View) belongs to West Harrow’s zone U, so a “county road” address can sit in either district. We check which one yours is, because the zones run to different hours.

The houses on these roads are mostly semis and short terraces of the early 1930s. Inside, the typical plan is a front door into a narrow hall, the stair rising from it with a turn near the top, two reception rooms (often opened into one), and three bedrooms with a small box room over the hall. Many have since had a loft conversion or a rear extension. A corner sofa or a wardrobe that came in before a doorway was moved may not leave the same way, so we ask for photos of the hall and the landing, and our guide on what happens when a sofa will not go through the door explains when we take legs, doors or the whole piece apart.

Council houses from the 1920s

A little of North Harrow is older than the private estates. The county history lists a council estate of 53 houses at North Harrow among those built under the housing acts of 1919 to 1925, before the station opened. It does not name the streets, so we will not guess at them here. If your house is one of them, it moves much like the 1930s houses around it, with one thing worth mentioning: front paths and gardens on estates of that period can be long, so we ask how far your door is from where the van can stop.

The listed 1930s flats on Pinner Road

Towards Pinner, on the north side of Pinner Road, stand two groups of flats that look nothing like the houses around them. Pinner Court, at 37 to 72 Pinner Road, is listed at Grade II. Historic England describes two L-shaped blocks of 18 flats each, three storeys high, with three front entrances in each block serving six flats apiece, and timber staircases in the entrance halls. Next to it is Capel Gardens, locally listed. Harrow Council’s Pinner Road Conservation Area appraisal dates both groups to 1935 to 1937, and notes that the blocks are set back about 35 metres from Pinner Road behind ornamental gardens. The area became a conservation area in March 2015.

Those 35 metres matter on moving day. With the blocks standing that far back from the kerb, expect every box to go along a garden path, and a top-floor flat adds two flights of an original staircase that nobody wants scratched. We plan these moves with a third person on the carry, protect the stair rails and landings, and leave extra time. Before booking we ask which entrance you use, which floor you are on, and whether the managing agent has rules about moving days. Our notes on moving into or out of a London block of flats list the questions a managing agent tends to ask.

Flats over the shops at the crossroads

The shops at the station crossroads line Station Road and both directions of Pinner Road, and many have flats above, reached by a door beside the shopfront and a single stair. These are some of the trickiest North Harrow addresses for a van, because the council’s map shows loading restrictions on much of the kerb nearby: on Pinner Road north-west of the crossroads at 08:00 to 09:30 and 16:30 to 18:30 on weekdays, on Station Road and Cambridge Road at 08:00 to 09:30 and 16:00 to 18:30 Monday to Saturday, and on the stretch of Pinner Road running east towards Harrow from 07:00 to 10:00 and 15:00 to 20:00 on weekdays and 08:00 to 18:30 at weekends. There are marked loading bays on Pinner Road and Station Road. We plan a shop-flat move around those times, usually loading mid-morning or in the early afternoon.

Shops, surgeries and small offices

The parade at the crossroads is a mix of shops, cafés, offices and services, and a business move here is usually a single unit with stock, desks and a few computers. We plan those for an evening or a Sunday, outside the loading restrictions and the trading day. Our office and business removals team handles the furniture and files, and our IT relocation crew disconnects the computers, tills and network and sets them up again at the new premises.

Smaller moves, packing and storage

Not every North Harrow job is a whole house. A bed, a desk and some boxes going from a flat at the crossroads to a house in Rayners Lane is a job for our man and van service, and we price it on what goes in the van. When a sale on one of the county roads completes before the purchase is ready, our storage while the chain catches up keeps everything until you have the keys. For a semi with a full loft room, our packing crew can box up the house the day before. North Harrow sits inside the London ULEZ like the rest of Greater London; our explainer on ULEZ and Congestion Charge costs for a removal van sets out what a longer route adds, and anything that applies to your move is in the fixed price.